Third Time Lucky
by Tasha King
Summary: Third time was the charm for Blaise and Jeremy, and things start to go beyond just sex. But will Blaise face up to the demons in her past? Blaise/ Jeremy. Romance/ hurt/ comfort. First fanfic.


Blaise/ Jeremy. Romance/ hurt/ comfort. First fanfic.

**Third Time Lucky**

For once the rookie was right, third time _was_ the charm.

The first and second times Jeremy Redbird and I had sex, it was pure lust- adrenaline from kicking terrorist ass, and an unbelievable amount of buildup. After I propositioned him in the middle of a bomb blast, we had to answer interminable Secret Service questions before getting dropped off at the precinct. Before he could go in and file paperwork or something, I stepped in front of him.

"So rookie, I left my car at an arms dealer's villa and it has to be cleared by a bloody bomb squad tonight. Could I get a ride home?" With the biggest grin in the world, he answered, "Thy wish is my command, ma'am. " Unfortunately, he also remembered that we had to go to Kai's Fourth of July party or never hear the end of it, so we made as short an appearance as we could.

By the time we reached my place, the tension was so strong that even before we got in the door, we were kissing with the desperation of reunited lovers. I barely had breath to warn him this would be a one-off thing, before we had burningly passionate sex- twice.

But the third time- the third time was different. When I made him stay, he said, "Guess I gotta obey orders, but you have to give me some time, if you know what I mean." I smiled and kissed his surprisingly broad shoulder. "But meanwhile…" He kissed me tenderly all over, eventually coming back to my face. "Do you know how beautiful you are? Especially when you smile. I haven't seen you really smile in a while, not until this afternoon in the blast. That's why I said yes right away. Of course I couldn't say no to _this_"- he pressed himself against me and smiled – "but that's the real reason, cos I wanted to keep that smile on your face." I looked into his eyes and couldn't find any trace of a lie, and had to bury my face in his neck so he wouldn't see the fear. And the lovemaking was so tender that we couldn't let go of each other for a long time afterwards.

When he finally got up to leave, I tried to sound casual as I said, "You could stay if you want, y'know." Fortunately, he had the sense not to make it into a joke, but simply snuggled in.

The morning after. I woke up alone in bed, but with the smell of coffee coming from the kitchen.

"Morning ma'am! Unless I'm mistaken, you don't have a _single_ thing in your fridge?"

"Ugh, trust _you_ to be an early riser. By the way, you're overlooking the crucial detail of the takeout menus stuck _on_ my fridge."

He shrugged. "Oh well. Guess a girl can't be_ too_ perfect. Y'want a ride to Dynamite Heights?"

"Sure, that would be a way to make yourself useful. But just drop me at the corner of his street, I don't want the whole precinct to know about this."

"That's if _you_ can keep quiet about snagging young meat."

"Ha-ha, _very_ funny. Hang on- how old are you, rookie?"

"27, and the name's Jerry."

"Shit- I'm _six_ years older than you, rookie. That makes me a cougar doesn't it? Damnit, I'm a bloody reality-TV cliché!"

So he spent the whole ride to Yevgenev's place trying to convince me that I wasn't defiling his innocence, and that people in rural California had sex too. I wasn't too convinced- Lord knows _I_ never got any in Jericho.

So we fell into an easy routine- clandestine dates, laughing at how ridiculous detective movies were, having I-can't-believe-I'm-alive sex with a frequency only SFPD detectives can achieve, and never talking about the future.

That is, till my mum slipped in the bathroom and died of a concussion in early December. I took two weeks off and refused to answer any calls, but one morning, my doorbell wouldn't stop ringing.

I pulled on some shorts and went to the door. "As a newly-minted detective, you should be protecting the American people, not torturing those with hangovers, y'know."

"On the contrary, I brought ingredients for a fry-up _and_ a _menudo_. Good ol' American multi-cultural hangover cures, including one mixed-race rookie detective that just might do the trick."

He looked so over-enthusiastic that I couldn't help but laugh, which was a big mistake because within three seconds it had turned into a sob, and I was in his arms.

"Sorry for being such a wreck-she didn't even remember me at the end, but I still can't believe that-that this is _it_. She was the only one I still cooked for, even if it was only eggs. The only one that connected me to anywhere in the world. And now- I've no-one left."

"That doesn't have to be the case, y'know."

"Are you-? OK, don't try to take advantage of people when they're down, you're really not good at it."

"I'm serious, Blaise. I- I'm transferring back to El Dorado, and I don't want this to just end."

I pulled away. "You're transferring back? How come I didn't know about this?"

"You wouldn't answer my calls, and I had a case I couldn't get away from. Somebody high up decided that Lieutenant Anders was affecting the performance of the precinct, and they're bringing in a new Captain from San Jose. They're getting rid of me along with Anders."

I could only whisper, "Wh-when?"

"The transfer will be official from January 1st, but I guess I won't be coming back after Christmas."

I took a deep breath and pulled myself to my full height. "That's good for you then, going back to be the only Detective in Placerville. Big fish in a small pond and all that. "

"Blaise- don't be like this. You know I would stay if I had a choice. I mean- if you just _said_ you wanted me around, I'll try everything I can to get transferred back here. "

"Don't be stupid. Some of us know you're a good guy, but for most people you're Anders' spy and the guy who took Captain Yeong's credit for the Livewire case. Nobody'll want you and you'll never get the transfer. Anyway, I never said anything about where I want you to be"- "well, unless you count_ physical_ geography."

I had never seen him look so bitter. "That's just the problem isn't it? You never say anything that isn't sarcastic, or 'tough'. Well, _I_ will then. I don't know about the future, but just come home with me for Christmas."

It took all I had to shake my head, slowly so that tears wouldn't fall. "C'mon Blaise, I don't want either of us to be alone over Christmas. "

"I'll be OK alone, used to it really-"

"_I_ won't be OK alone. I just- I don't know when I'll see you again after Christmas, and maybe even if I come back you'll be dating someone else, and thinking about that just makes me feel like such a huge idio-"

Against my better judgment, I stopped him with an embrace.

In retrospect, I'm surprised we even kept the secret for that long. At the bar one night, Mal sheepishly asked me, "Hey Blaise, if you've got nothing on during Christmas and wouldn't mind hanging out with a dude with an estranged wife, a dead best friend and an engaged partner, let's grab a drink sometime?"

"I've got better things to do than a pity party, Fallon. I'm doing a Christmas Eve shift, then we're driving to my friend's place for Christmas."

He had been a detective for so long that it was an instinct with him, an instinct that kicked in no matter how many pints he had downed. "So. Someone willing to give up Christmas Eve with family to drive you around. A guy then, possibly someone in the force, no-one else could be used to giving up holidays. He lives outside San Fran, yet somewhere close enough to reach before Christmas dinner. God, it's Redbird isn't it? I _knew _there was something between you two. And now you're meeting the family! You guys are like serious, man!"

I didn't want to outright lie to Mal. "He probably just took pity on the orphaned chick like you, and I couldn't say no to his little rookie face. Besides, a Native American Christmas would be cool to see…"

"Dude, please don't say that while I'm drunk, I might start making racist jokes and end up on Youtube or something. But seriously, I'm happy for you, babe. Redbird has turned out to be an OK guy. "

I couldn't say no to that.

When Jerry picked me up, I realized I didn't even know where he lived. For someone who had volunteered information about his conservative parents and three married brothers, he had strangely never mentioned this.

When asked, he gave a huge sigh. "Oh well, this was bound to happen. Just try not to laugh too much OK? "

"What? I just wanna know where you live."

"Sigh- OK, fine, Redbird Canyon."

"What?"

"Redbird Canyon. I grew up in Texas, but a few years ago my folks had a mid-life crisis and this was their idea of reconnecting with their roots. My dad had a Native American dad who was never there for him, and he never really knew much about his traditions. Then he saw Redbird Canyon on the map, and figured there would be some Native Americans there or something. So we moved there and guess what? We were the only Redbirds around. It really isn't as funny as it seems."

But the more I tried to suppress the giggles, the more they burst out of me.

Christmas was…interesting. Somehow it seemed I was expected to help in the dinner preparations, so I beat some eggs the wrong way, avoided an alarming number of children and listened to his sisters-in-law gush about how blonde I was. Mrs. Redbird didn't seem to like me very much, even though I didn't make a single Redbird Canyon joke or express disappointment about how un-exotic their Christmas was. I guess she feared losing her most promising son to someone who didn't even know how to beat eggs.

I slept in the guest room, but Jerry snuck in every night. On my last night, he asked for the millionth time, "Why can't we figure something out?"

I decided he deserved an explanation. "OK rookie, you want explanations? We can't figure something out cos I don't want to. "

"But…I know you like me, or you wouldn't be here at all."

His hurt-puppy eyes made me blurt out the truth. "OK, fine, I do. But… you're cute and smart and funny, and you have a sense of righteousness that so many of us on the force have lost. You have the pick of all the girls you could want, you don't need me."

"But I _do_. I need your crazy sense of humor, your dedication to police work that's so like mine, your absolute lack of pretension, and- and your eyes that tell me so much you don't." –" Among other things. "

I was about to counter when he cut me off. "Don't tell me whom to love Blaise. If you're going to leave, at least just leave me that. Nobody can tell anyone else whom to love."

"Oh really? You_ really_ believe that, rookie? What about me and Sebastian Tarly? Did the JTTF give me the freedom to love whom I wanted? "

"But.. you only pretended?"

"Pretending something for two years isn't that simple, rookie. Sebastian Tarly was the only man I kissed for two years. His face was the first thing I saw every morning and the last thing I saw every night. Every time I heard his sermons I had to pretend I was convinced 100%, yet keep reminding myself he was a terrorist. He told me he loved me every day, and then one day he tried to kill me. When he did that, I wasn't just pretending to plead with him, on some level I was actually afraid to lose him, because even though he was a psycho, he was the only one who had shown me any tenderness for the past two years."

"But you're not in Jericho anymore, baby. You can move on." He tried to reach out to me, but I took a step back, a mirthless smile on my lips.

"You know what, I really wish I could. I just- I learnt to fake love so well that I can't trust my own feelings anymore. I developed feelings for Greg even though I knew he was married, just as a mechanism against falling deeper for Sebastian. After the raid, I was treated for personality issues while self-medicating with one night stands, and neither helped, I just learnt to act tough. Then I came back to SFPD and met Mal again, and I don't know if I really felt for him, or just wanted to go back to the time before Jericho."

I reached out and touched his cheek. "And then there was you. You're so_ sweet_ rookie, you play by the book cos you believe in the book, and even in relationships you believe in commitment and sacrifice and all that fairytale stuff. I really like you, but I don't know if I can love you, and I definitely didn't dare to be honest with you. And you deserve better. You deserve someone without all this baggage."

"But Blaise- I knew all that. I broke my own rules, and dug up files from the Jericho operation. I saw how you stopped smiling when you came back from Vegas. I knew it wouldn't be easy being with you, but- somehow it's still the only thing I want."

He was holding my arms now, and the easiest thing to do would have been to fall into an embrace. But I closed my eyes and stepped back for the second time that night. "I just… _can't_ Jerry, the last thing I wanna do is to hurt you even more. "

He was shaking with indignation, but all he said was, "I can't make you change your decision. But that doesn't mean I'm happy about it."

As I let his tears soak into my hair, I realised I wasn't happy about it either.

The next morning, when Jerry dropped me off at the rental car company in Placerville, he passed me an MP3 player. "It's some songs I chose to represent our times together. Kinda cheesy isn't it?"

"I didn't know people of your generation even knew what a mix tape was." With that and a final lingering kiss, I was off, not daring to look back.

As I drove, I plugged the MP3 player in and browsed through the songs. The first song was "Boom! Shake the Room", which made me smile despite everything. Then there were songs from every bad movie we'd seen, songs that had made me upset because he was too young to know them, even the music from the pubs we went to- interspersed with what seemed to be a verbal diary of our memories. He mentioned the stupid jokes we made, the times we dared to hold hands in public, and even kept a running tally of my drinking capacity.

I fast forwarded to the last track- the only song name I didn't recognize. It was Jerry singing "Please Come Home for Christmas": "So won't you tell me you'll never more roam/ Christmas and New Year's will find you home/ There'll be no more sorrow, no grief and pain/ And I'll be happy, happy once again". Then his voice broke with emotion, and he said: "24 December 2012. I still can't believe that I, rookie detective Jerry Redbird, get to bring blonde goddess and totally legit detective Blaise Corso home for Christmas. I just wish- it doesn't feel like the last time. "

"If she just said it, I'd give up everything to be with her. Honestly, I don't know how or when this feeling became so intense. At first it was just a crush, then a dream come true, but slowly she became more than the dream, she became this real woman with so much pain in her past, and I wanted to make her happy, but she wouldn't let me. I don't know if there'll be a breakthrough over Christmas, but even if she chooses to leave, I won't give up. I'll keep trying till she smiles that beautiful smile again." -"OK, I sound like a stalker."

By this time, I was sobbing so hard I couldn't drive, so I pulled over. I didn't even hear the police officer approaching till he tapped on the window. I made a futile attempt at drying my tears and reluctantly wound down the window.

"Ma'am, are you all right?"

"Yeah, it's just some personal issues really, but I'm gonna be OK."

"OK Ma'am, just calm down and take care driving alright?"

I had started winding up my window again when he leant forward and said, "Hang on, you look really familiar, like you've been on TV or something. Aren't you that supercool cop from SFPD? The one that busted a terrorist plot with our own Detective Redbird?"

I really didn't want a story about me breaking down by a highway to go around the California police system. So I forced a smile and said, "Nah, people always say that, but that's my cousin actually. I'm not the strong one in the family, obviously."

"Oh OK, I thought you didn't look exactly the same. 'Cuse me ma'am, take care."

As I was starting the car again, I realized I was right—I wasn't Blaise Corso anymore. Not fearless, confident Blaise, but someone so damaged she didn't even dare grasp happiness when it was thrust in her face. So I turned around and sped straight back to Redbird Canyon.

I didn't dare to let myself stop and think, so I walked straight up to Jerry's door and knocked. He answered so fast, it was as if he had been waiting for that knock. Seeing me, he quickly closed the door against everyone's curious stares, then enveloped me in the tightest hug I had ever received.

For a while, it seemed like the only thing I could hear was our hearts pounding. Then I whispered in his ear, "Guess you're a keeper, rookie."

He pulled back to look at me, his eyes glinting. "Really?"

I nodded.

"So God really does answer your prayers if you go to church for Christmas!"

"Oh c'mon, stop being so enslaved to imposed Judeo-Christian superstitions." -"Did I just say that? I've been hanging out with Natara Williams _way_ too much. "

Later, I offered to ask for a transfer to El Dorado, but he said, "You'll be bored in this hick town. I saw some openings on the SFPD website, I'll apply for those. They can't stop me if I'm the best candidate available, right?"

"But those openings are for Deputies, and you were in San Fran to become a Detective!"

"Now that's where I would respectfully disagree, ma'am. I went there to become a Detective, but the reason I _stayed- _that was all you."


End file.
